As Alice Miller [google her] would have said, unless someone can or is willing to closely EXAMINE the day to day, moment to moment interactions of the family members involved, there is no adequate way to say what is happening to produce what effects and, since there is not much information in your report, I'd have to say that, if the kids are struggling, their parents are NOT consistently promoting love, respect and friendship in the family.
I believe I could spot the reasons for their rivalry if I had access to each and every daily event and detail of the family's interactions. In my family, the corruption and enemy making coming from our parents was glaringly obvious to everyone who knew us!
Sorry but you are very WRONG about me! By the way, how was your childhood? I now can see the TRUTH about not only my parents and family but most other families and I've also seen over and over that most parents are fanatically committed to defending them self and other parents from being examined and/or having their parenting questioned. IMO, the institution of parenting is NOT some Sacred, Untouchable Cow!
So long as it's the TRUTH and not just more attacks to defend Parenting, I'm open to it.
What is your definition of "normal rivalry"?
If, after my wife & I did our best to promote love, respect and dignity in our family but our kids displayed any kind of hostile "rivalry" (not healthy competition), us parents would stop at nothing to find out why our kids are fighting and, if it's about our own bad parenting, we would quickly go looking for solutions for our parental FAILURES in order to HELP our kids return to being LOVING FRIENDS and not jealous, rivalrous enemies! [from an online dictionary: Rivalry: Synonyms: opposition, antagonism; jealousy.]
IMO, the term "normal rivalry" is a convenient term that parents invented to WHITE WASH the unhealthy: anger, FEAR, resentment, hostility, jealousy, etc. in their damaged children and also to DISGUISE (Smoke screen) their own bad parenting while passing the hot potato to their kids! The term "normal rivalry" is another way to say: "Yes my kids hate each other but I'll just pretend that it's some innocent, little harmless thing that all kids get into and I'll just laugh it off or ignore it so long as it doesn't EFFECT ME!
I don't know who this "we" is but in my case, our very negligent and inadequate parents FAILED to help us happily, respectfully and LOVINGLY accept each other from the 1st day we were born starting with their first son. We were all "different" but it was parenting failures that caused us NOT to get along! We could have all been very good & best friends from day one IF ONLY our stupid parents had allowed or encouraged it.
Just speaking for my self and my family, those are all examples of very bad and inadequate parental conditioning! There is NO excuse not to befriend someone just because they are "not our type" or at least show them some common courtesy! But many people were shunned and gossiped about behind their backs by our parents and other in-laws thus setting a ROTTEN example for all of the kids in our family. LOL, I was "forced" to do and be a lot of things when I was young and had no experience or defense against the very bad parental and in-law examples given to me!
IMO, parents doing a halfass, frucked up job is the whole and entire reason and cause for innocent, inexperienced children to "compete for brownie points, attention or whatever" which are ALL symptoms of insecurity, fear, anger, desperation, loneliness, NEGLECT, jealousy and many other sad consequences of frucked up, halfass parenting. I know that most if not all of my insecurities, fears, bad self esteem, anger, jealousy, cruelty and incredible SORROW were the direct result of the bad parenting I fell victim to and I now see that my parents and their parents and their parents ALL suffered from the same sad and sorry consequences as I did BUT they never found any way to fix it nor even looked for a way but just mindlessly lived their miserable, unhappy lives to their bitter, sick, alcoholic, cancerous end without ever realizing what had been done to all of them when they were innocent little kids.
I would take you more seriously if you were willing to use the word "I" more often and write of your own experiences while refraining from attacking me and my experiences and concepts but you are welcome to your opinions just as I believe I am in this forum. The only thing that could ever help any of us is to offer others our own experience and understanding and LET them draw their own conclusions so, thanks for offering your opinions here.
jim